How to Structure Your Content to Win Online Bookings

Most booking sites share the same core functionality to help users book a trip.

Yet not all of them deliver experiences worthy of their customers. This is why most of the time the booking process is not be completed.

Keep reading to see how structuring your content can help you convert more.

Travel Site Challenges

The first step to climb any mountain is getting to know the trail. There a plenty of barriers that can make your site a nightmarish experiences for your users, leading to high abandonment rates.

The most common barriers include a long and complicated bookings and overwhelming interfaces. Your users might get confused at checkout or they might be having trouble when switching between devices.

Many of the problems that complicate the User Experience in travel sites are related to,

Layout Structure Problems

The structure of the elements in your site has to appear very clear to your users. Any disruption in the sequence of their search can become a negative experience.

A good example are differences between desktop to mobile versions of your site. They sometimes jam too many visual elements onto the smaller, mobile screen. This creates visual chaos for a user who’s just wants to make a purchase.

The structure must be designed with the user, device, and intention in mind.

Lack of prioritization

You must judge which elements are the most important so users can book a trip. This means everything from the size of a button to the order of the fields a user might have to fill.

Imagine a travel website where the search box is way below the fold. Travelers wouldn’t be able to find it, let alone the flight they are looking for.

Hard to Find Content

This is about anticipating your users needs. You might have a very simple process to find a hotel room, and proceed to make the purchase. But what about the bed size? If they don’t have this information they can’t relate to the content.

For an in depth look at Information and Content Architecture, check out our upcoming webinar.

Your users need good information to be able to make the best decisions on their way to checkout.

These issues are intertwined and can vary depending on the complexity of the design elements in your site.

Crafting a Better Experience

To craft a better User Experience it is essential to generate better content architecture.

Information Architecture helps you to,

Understand your site from a user’s point of view

Organize information with the right taxonomies

Map user workflow

Create intuitive navigation

Content Architecture helps you to,

Identify relevant content

Prioritize content elements

Shape the purpose of any page

Hierarchize content

Design cross device functionality

Structuring information will help your users find what they need when they are booking a flight or a hotel. Users will not be distracted by information they do not need and will be that much more likely to complete the checkout process.

At the end of the day, if visitors don’t find the information they need, they’ll leave the site.

Structuring Your Site’s Information

There are many methodologies to organize and structure information. Pick the one that works best for your users,

Card Sorting

This method is used to understand how users organize information. The basic idea is to get to know a user’s mental model by having them perform tasks with a set of cards. Here is our Card Sorting infographic to see how we have used in the past.

Object-Oriented UX Mapping

OOUX Mapping can help you structure information based on real life objects. It places the user’s mental models above the system’s actions.

The Content Architecture Funnel

The Content Architecture Funnel gives you the tools to define a message, in order to shape your content prioritizing all its elements based on your users and business goals.

Finally…

As long as your content is organized and structured correctly, it will definitely help you increase your conversion rates. Keep the information that will help your users find what’s relevant to them.